Greetings Kambrians, with several major events, platform releases, and hackathons, it has certainly been a busy year! And now the time has come to release our updated plans for 2020. As always, we’d like to thank our community for your support, and we look forward to working with you over the years to come. Let’s take a look at what we’ve accomplished, where we are currently, and what we expect to build in our Kambria roadmap for 2020.
The details that follow are a representation of our current plan for the next year, but please note that this roadmap is subject to change. We also anticipate new items to be added to this roadmap over time. While we strived to make this as detailed, accurate, and thorough as possible, a large number of variables exist, so some details may evolve. Deadlines are important to us, and we will work diligently to meet them to the best of our abilities. We hope to achieve this, and more: to underpromise and overdeliver is our aim.
In January 2019, we released the Kambria Business Model Master Plan, a detailed outline of Kambria’s three-pronged approach to building a successful platform and business. Our three main areas of focus, all of equal importance, are to build a strong token economy, to build a strong developer community, and to create real-world revenue streams. If you have not read the Master Plan, we highly suggest you read it here.
Starting July 2019, we released the Kambria Open Innovation Platform, the world’s first open-collaboration platform to include both hardware and software specializing in robotics, AI, and disruptive frontier technologies. After that release, we focused on creating relationships with a global network of developers and enterprise companies through hackathons and events across several continents -- and we achieved just that.
Setting the stage with our Vietnam AI Grand Challenge, this 1,000+ participant, multi-day event created high visibility for our platform. Now recognized as an industry leader, Viet Thai International and other corporations have approached Kambria to utilize our community of developers to support their development efforts. Most recently, Vietnamese conglomerate, VTI, reached out to us to work together on robotics applications for their F&B and retail stores. VTI owns more than 5,000 stores globally of well-known brands such as Highland Coffee, Pho 24, Aldo, and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (which they recently acquired for $350M). With more details to follow, you can expect robots that can help out with sales tasks in the near future. We have been working closely with the Vietnamese government, and have been in contact with several other large companies and governments to explore how we can work together to solve common challenges.
With the great success of our most recent event in Ho Chi Minh City, VietAI Summit 2019, we expect new opportunities to develop the platform further, as we look to build our network exponentially. As we switch gears into 2020, a great deal of focus will lean towards community empowerment -- giving our token holders, developer community, and enterprise partners the opportunity to get involved in new ways, as well as creating additional utility for KAT on the platform.
Q4: 2019 - Token Disablement Begins
We previously announced we would be disabling 1.2 billion KAT from our total supply. You can find the full announcement in our KAT Token Supply Update. This unprecedented event was designed to create balance in the ecosystem and further empower our community of token holders and developers. Earlier this year, we decided to burn 1.2 billion KAT from our unsold tokens, and an additional 100 million KAT that we bought back from token holders. The purpose and motivation for permanently disabling these tokens is to create an equilibrium between Kambria and the community to create confidence and demonstrate our commitment to our engaged community with a 1:1 ratio of Kambria’s allocation of KAT to our community’s allocation.
Beginning December 15th, we will execute the first phase of token disablement by sending 100 million KAT to an address for which it is impossible to retrieve the private key. These tokens will be permanently disabled, and no longer considered part of our total supply. The amount of KAT disabled will increase over time. Continuing this through 2020, we will periodically disable the remaining 1.1 billion KAT until we have disabled a full 50% of our original supply, or 33% of our current supply.
We intend to disable, on average, just under 300 million KAT per quarter throughout 2020. Kambria will alert the community prior to the dates and times. The remaining 1.1 billion tokens will be disabled by December 31, 2020, leaving our total supply capped at 2.5 billion KAT.
Q1: 2020 - Learn, Practice, Prove, and Get Rewarded
Through a combination of our highly anticipated education platform, resource library, multi-national hackathons, and bounty challenges, we will invite our community to participate more fully in our development. With strong support from local communities, governments, and major enterprise companies, we are preparing for a strong beginning to 2020.
Moving into the new year, Kambria will be heavily focused on both building and involving our community. We believe that our community is the backbone of our project. Now that our platform is launched, continuing to build a strong developer and token holder community is our top priority. We have new bounties, educational platforms, and platform functionality all in development. We are preparing for another busy season. All programs are designed to build upon and complement one another to create strong token utility and an ecosystem that is poised for exponential growth.
Because our model centers around the KAT token, and used to facilitate the transfer of value for every aspect of the platform, no company or developer will be able to take advantage of the unique benefits our platform provides without using our token. The number of companies who have signaled interest in building on our platform grows with each event, bounty, and conference we host. We expect this trend to become far more evident over the next year.
Kambria eduKATion
Learn
We are excited to share with you that Kambria will offer brand new educational courses and curriculum, available through our Open Innovation Platform. Our mission is to build a community of world-class AI talent. We will partner with VietAI to offer comprehensive Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning online courses that will provide our students with the tools needed to apply learning algorithms to build and develop applications. The machine learning course will be the first of a growing series of curricula, with a special focus on AI, machine learning, deep learning, mechanical design, and robotics. Students who demonstrate a strong understanding and complete their courses successfully will earn certifications which can create additional career opportunities.
Practice, Prove, and Get Rewarded!
We will offer developers the opportunity to put into practice the fundamental application of the resources they learned through our online courses. Learn more about MOOCs on our blog. We will develop online quizzes and practical activities for researchers to continually practice and sharpen their skills. To build upon this further, we will host mini-hackathons within Kambria eduKATion, where students will be able to compete against one another for K-Prizes and build their professional portfolio. These initiatives are designed to assist our students in earning competitive job opportunities and careers, and to collaborate with others to innovate new technologies. Proven and consistent developers will be personally connected with projects or corporations that are looking to hire from our talent pool. We expect these approaches to expand our developer community and build regular engagement on Kambria.
By providing a valuable educational platform, we strengthen not only the services we provide, but also empower the developers who build on our platform. This will provide Kambria with a unique advantage and stimulate more activity and interest from enterprise companies who would like to utilize the top talent from emerging tech hubs such as Vietnam and others across the globe. If you are interested in starting your journey into artificial intelligence and machine learning, or if you would like to develop stronger skills, take advantage of Kambria eduKATion.
OhmniLabs Deep Learning Dataset Robotic Bounty
If data is the new oil, then quality data is refined oil. Machine learning engineers and data scientists agree: quality data is the single-most important factor in the data-pipeline. Machine learning analytics are only as reliable as the data you give it, and so, clean-labeled data is of utmost value to AI projects.
For this reason, we are launching the next major bounty challenge available on Kambria. Beginning in Q1, we will work with our corporate sponsors, OhmniLabs, and the community to build a complete and comprehensive deep learning database for robotic and AI applications. In addition, this dataset will also enable researchers and companies to build more advanced machine learning projects, and will prove to be an incredibly valuable asset for Kambria & OhmniLabs.
The OhmniLabs Deep Learning Database Robotic Bounty Challenge will be a global and highly-inclusive challenge that involves our entire community. We would like to openly invite all interested to join us in building a clean and comprehensive data set to assist and accelerate semantic understanding of the environment. All tasks will involve identifying objects in photos, and will not require any specific or technical knowledge about machine learning to participate. For the Kambria community, this project will increase the utility of KAT and will be very valuable to researchers and corporations who may choose to license the data set.
The bounty will offer $20,000 in KAT to our community as compensation for their work. As an added bonus, all of the $20,000 in K-Prizes will be purchased directly from exchanges at the current market rate at the time of purchase. No purchase is necessary to join this bounty. Eligibility requirements apply.
Q2-Q3: 2020 - Business & Platform Development
In addition, we will continue to develop the Kambria Platform. Still in development is our KDNA codebase, and other additional features that we will begin to roll out during 2020. OhmniLabs is also nearing end-phase development of modular components that will also be available within Kambria’s ecosystem. As modular components from OhmniLabs become available, they will strengthen developers who are building robotics on our Open Innovation Platform, providing a variety of tools at developers’ disposal and creating limitless potential for new technologies to be developed on top of them.
Open Innovation Hubs & More
We are also working closely with other large corporations and governments to build and develop additional Open Innovation Hubs, large-scale bounty challenges, and Kambria’s Open Innovation services. By creating new hubs in various parts of the world, our exposure to the robotics and artificial intelligence will increase drastically. Over the next year, we hope to announce the opening of at least one Open Innovation Hubs in each key geography.
Thank you for your continued support! Our community cannot grow and thrive without you. Please be sure to contact us through one of our channels below with any questions. We look forward to hearing from you.
*Eligibility
To claim a prize or to be eligible for any KAT payment issued by Kambria, you must pass a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) check and verify that you are not a citizen or resident of the following countries: Balkans, Belarus, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Burma, Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Nicaragua, North Korea, People’s Republic of China, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, United States of America, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
